Hugh Grant Has Dropped Out of the Next 'Bridget Jones' Movie

There's about to be a big, Hugh Grant-shaped hole in the hearts of rom-com faithfuls and granny panty-wearers everywhere: The actor has officially dropped out of the upcoming Bridget Jones installment.

Grant, who played Bridget's more questionable love interest Daniel Cleaver in the series' first two films, told a British radio station (via The Telegraph) Friday that, after several years of script rewrites, he's simply "decided not to do it."

"I think they're going to go ahead and do it without Daniel," he said. "The book's excellent, by the way, but the script is completely different—well, the script as I last saw it a few years ago."

The new film, titled Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, sees Bridget Jones as a 40-year-old with babies on the brain, and will reportedly follow a different plotline than the novel off which it's based. In spite of author Helen Fielding killing off sweater lover Mark Darcy (which, WHY?) in her 2013 novel of the same name, both Colin Firth and Renée Zellweger are rumored to have signed on for the movie.

It's already been 10 years since the release of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason—and now, with this announcement from Grant, it sounds like we'll be waiting even longer than we anticipated for the next chapter.

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